Microscopes are employed in a wide variety of fields to view various types of biological and non-biological samples. Most microscopes are limited to generating two-dimensional (2D) images of a sample. However, obtaining three-dimensional (3D) views of a sample would be desirable in order to provide better information as to feature shape, topography, and spatial distribution. Currently, 3D images may be acquired by scanning the axial depth of focus through the sample. The focal stack of images acquired in this manner may then be post-processed using 3D deconvolution algorithms and blending techniques to generate 3D views of the sample. However, the computation required makes these techniques slow and non-real time, and discrete axial sampling results in limited 3D information or artifacts in the 3D view. Recently light field microscopy has been implemented with a microlens array in front of the camera to resolve angular information for a collection of image pixels. However, the spatial resolution trade-off with this technique seems rather severe for viewing micrometer-sized samples in three-dimensional views in a single image capture.
Therefore, there is a need to provide microscopes and methods for generating 3D images of samples.